You can access the SMF-based search forum here https://forum.arduino.cc/index.php?action=search but it does not work.
The Arduino forum farms their searches out to google. Although it has been awhile since the Arduino forums had this searching functionality I do recall getting better results. Most likely because this search functionality has access to more information than a google based search has and it did not give duplicate results for each page in the thread.
Is there a way to use SMF's search feature instead of Google's?
If the reason that this feature was dropped was because it was causing too much load on the servers then just use the google search for non-members and also allow the SMF-based search for members.
I recall google search is way faster.
The arduino.cc site is indexed daily I guess.
How much faster? I am sure a majority of the time is spend waiting for the page to load anyway. If the search seems to take too long from the perspective of the user, static content could be served while the query is being processed. By the time all static content is served I am sure the query will be finished a long time ago relative to how long it takes to serve such static content.
I do not recall if there were measurements made, but I recall it sometimes took dozens of seconds.
I can wait dozens of seconds. I know there are people who would not like the wait; if that is the case then they can continue to use google. I am just interested in the option to use the forum's search feature.
Also if the results are significantly better, the wait is worth it because one will need to spend less time sifting through results.
Mr_arduino:
If the reason that this feature was dropped was because it was causing too much load on the servers then just use the google search for non-members and also allow the SMF-based search for members.
The reason it was dropped was it didn't work. For example, you would search for "Uno" and get no hits.